The post-election hangover

By Madison Taylor / Times-News

Published: Friday, November 9, 2012 at 03:35 PM.

By the way, Alamance County voters sent three incumbents back to Congress on Tuesday.

What I did find a little off kilter was the overwhelming rejection of the quarter-cent sales tax proposed to pay for the bonds to build a new classroom structure at Alamance Community College and unspecified economic development. On the other hand, voters by a wide margin OK’d bonds to construct the building at ACC.

I first wondered if some form of multiple personality thing might be going on among local voters.

Then I figured they just didn’t want to put a large amount of money into the hands of politicians to spend willy-nilly.

Can’t say I blame them.

But I do hope the college gets the building it needs.

Newly elected County Commissioner David I. Smith said after winning his seat on Tuesday that upon being sworn into office he intends to reveal his master plan to “get the county in financial shape.”

Take the national election, for example — you know, the one for president. It’s becoming apparent that politics doesn’t really matter anymore.

It’s about math — and science.

In the game “Trivial Pursuit” I could never answer questions in that category.

Apparently, it’s also a problem for Republicans.

It would help, of course, if many Republicans could first acknowledge that science even exists.

That’s a start.

According to the New York Times, the Barack Obama campaign used behavioral scientists to build a database of millions of undecided voters and targeted the ones in key precincts in swing states most likely to vote for Democrats, Obama or both.

They registered those voters and tracked them for months and weeks with regular telephone calls.

On Election Night, Mitt Romney’s campaign noticed pro-Obama results in precincts it never saw coming — not at all.

They were shocked is what they were.

By comparison, I got a call on Election Day at my office at the Times-News from a pretty confused Romney volunteer who had no idea he was even phoning a business to seek votes at the last minute.

From all appearances, the Obama campaign was cooking with digitally controlled gas while the Romney campaign hadn’t discovered fire yet.

And spent a lot of money doing it.

Speaking of, ahem, science, the online presidential poll at www.thetimesnews.com recorded 2,834 votes for Romney, or 65 percent, and 1,540 votes for Obama, or 35 percent.

Two cable news services — Fox and MSNBC — no longer have viewers but political cheerleaders.

Frequently political cheerleaders are only told what they want to hear.

Bad news interferes with the cheering, apparently.

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd said at Elon University she believes the worst thing Barack Obama did when he first took office in 2009 was to put House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic Harry Reid in charge of the stimulus, which they simply turned into another cash cow for longtime friends of Democrats.

Of course they did.

She doesn’t think he’ll make that mistake again.

Better not.

One of the saddest aspects of these elections locally is saying goodbye to two state representatives. Whether I agreed or disagreed with either one of them, I always enjoyed talking to Dan Ingle and Alice Bordsen. Neither decided to seek re-election this year. A shame, really.

I hope they still take the time to call every so often.

Alamance County will have a freshmen-only class in the state House when the session begins in 2013. That hasn’t happened since at least 1995, when Cary Allred won election to the state House.

Someone asked me on Thursday what surprised me about this election. I had to think on it awhile. Not much surprises me when it comes to the whims of American voters.

After all, these are the people who give Congress a disapproval rating of nearly 90 percent, yet send their own congressperson back election after election.

By the way, Alamance County voters sent three incumbents back to Congress on Tuesday.

What I did find a little off kilter was the overwhelming rejection of the quarter-cent sales tax proposed to pay for the bonds to build a new classroom structure at Alamance Community College and unspecified economic development. On the other hand, voters by a wide margin OK’d bonds to construct the building at ACC.

I first wondered if some form of multiple personality thing might be going on among local voters.

Then I figured they just didn’t want to put a large amount of money into the hands of politicians to spend willy-nilly.

Can’t say I blame them.

But I do hope the college gets the building it needs.

Newly elected County Commissioner David I. Smith said after winning his seat on Tuesday that upon being sworn into office he intends to reveal his master plan to “get the county in financial shape.”

I guess if he lost, this potentially county-saving proposal would’ve remained a deep and dark secret.

On the other hand, it has the novelty of being a promise offered after the campaign is over.

Alamance County Democrats can’t be very encouraged by the Election Night results. Its candidates lost across the board, except for incumbent Linda Massey in the Board of Commissioners’ race.

Republicans like to use the acronym RINO to describe Republican in Name Only. In this case some might say Massey could be a DINO.

It must get pretty lonely over at the courthouse for Democratic District Attorney Pat Nadolski.

David Spruill finally got elected to something, which might be the most noteworthy event of the 2012 local election season. He’s now on the Soil and Water Conservation District Board of Supervisors. He tried four previous times to get on that board. He also ran for a few other offices a time or two.

At least it’s not the same old thing.

Madison Taylor is editor of the Times-News. Contact him by email at mtaylor@thetimesnews.com or follow him on Twitter @tnmadisontaylor.